Drawn and quartered – Liverpool 2 Manchester city 2

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Liverpool certainly started the game with a lot of promise, what with Steven Gerrard in the starting eleven, although (spoiler alert!) he was kept quite all game long. What was quite surprising and could be touted a “medical miracle” that Benayoun and Riera were on the bench after receiving what could only be described a massage with a happy ending as they were massaged back to health with horse placenta of all therapeutic er… fluids?

After quite a positive quarter of an hour for Liverpool, their injury troubles boiled over on the field within the space of 3 or 4 minutes as Agger, on his return match, was taken out on the stretcher as a result of a concussion and similar fate awaited Ryan “rare starter” Babel as he picked up a rather nasty knock on the ankle (bring in the horse placenta!). Kyrgiakos and Benayoun replaced respectively, the injury prone defender, Daniel Agger, and the stay-on-bench prone Ryan Babel. From then on, barring a few weak corners from Liverpool a pot shot at goal by Mascherano and Lucas (what??!??) the half ended in a disappointingly drab note for the Red contingent.

The second half looked to begin with the same kind of verve or lack of, as the first half, at least as far as Liverpool were concerned. But of all people, Skrtel had different ideas. A free kick duly taken by Steven Gerrard resulted in a goal by a leg stuck out by none other than Martin Skrtel as the Slovakian defender celebrated his world cup qualification with a goal and a vital one for Liverpool. Liverpool’s first of the game. Skrtel’s first for Liverpool! But the job was far from done as there were 40 more minutes to go.

The heavy shadows that Liverpool had been casting for a good part of the previous two months looked spry again. And Rafa Benitez looked…. as stoic as ever! Turn that frown upside down Rafa!

Manchester City had different ideas as the game progressed and as if to prove Liverpool’s continuing inefficacy from set piece situations, Adebayor had to go and score of a corner in the 69th minute. This squared the match at 1-1 and all Rafa could do was wipe his classes down on his designer purple tie. Liverpool, I am sure, did recognize that a draw was not an option.

With 20 minutes to go, I was having an increasing feeling of deja vu. A feeling that isn’t really nice when associated with Liverpool’s current season given their poor form. This foreboding Deja vu turned to reality with a Stephen Ireland goal with Skrtel switching off for the second time in less than 10 minutes. This did not bode well for Liverpool as they have increasingly found themselves staring down the wrong end of a gun!

Having said that, in a matter of seconds, Placenta boy Benayoun slide-scored a goal to put Liverpool back in the fray. 2-2! The pitch was on fire, figuratively of course. The sort of fire that Liverpool would like to turn into a regular conflagration ala “Premier League season 2008-2009”, to zing Manchester City.

And minute 81. Whats this??? Cometh the hour, cometh the man??!??! Movement on the bench! Aquilani stirs!!!! Oh, he stirs to move into the tunnel to take a wee. It’s Fabio Aurelio, the other Placenta boy who would be coming on, ostensibly at least. At least, he was stripping down to his strip. With five minutes of regular time to go, Aurelio did come on for Benayoun as the latter had to recharge his placenta cream treatment quota!

The final cast of the die, which has been biased against Liverpool this season, did’t result in any jubilation for either side. Liverpool dropped a further two points. Two points that will prove to be crucial as I think it is quite safe to write Liverpool off now.